


Passenger

by Black_One



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Accidental Possession, Ben Still Has a Lot of Kylo in Him, Ben and Hux Don't Get Along, Crack Treated Seriously, Eventual Gingerpilot, Eventual Reylo, F/M, Force Ghosts, Force-Sensitive Armitage Hux, Inappropriate Use of the Force, M/M, Non-Canon Swearing, Post-Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Sarcastic Hux, Sassy Ben Solo, Through the Force All Things are Possible, awkward moments, weird force shit
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-02
Updated: 2020-02-02
Packaged: 2021-02-27 22:48:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22523524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Black_One/pseuds/Black_One
Summary: After the events of TROS, Hux awakens in the company of the last person he wants to see. Things only get worse from there.
Relationships: Armitage Hux & Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Poe Dameron & Finn, Poe Dameron/Armitage Hux, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 7
Kudos: 63





	Passenger

**Author's Note:**

> This is not my first fanfic, but it is the first one I've posted on AO3 and the first thing I've posted for Star Wars. I'm very wary of this fandom. We'll see how things go. 
> 
> Quick note (warning?): This whole thing is based off a very stupid idea I had while attending my work's Christmas party about a month ago. Normally something of this caliber would have died shortly after conception, but I had an hour to wait for food and no other way to entertain myself, so I ended up fleshing it out enough to want to write it. It's weird and relies on TROS's very liberal interpretation of Force capabilities. In other words, the Force can do whatever the plot requires it to. Also, much like in TROS, some mysteries will (probably) never be explained. Don't think about it too hard.

* * *

**Chapter One: The Dead Speak!**

* * *

"Hux."

Hux groaned, rising muzzily from a dark and dreamless sleep. With awareness—as foggy and sluggish as it was—came sensation, and Hux winced as he was abruptly beset on all fronts by a vicious storm of pain. His head pounded; his chest was on fire. He ached as if every bone in his body had broken, his left leg throbbing with particular intensity. The agony was fresh and all-consuming; merely breathing was a trial, and he didn't dare to try and open his eyes.

"Wake up."

It took a few seconds for the voice to percolate through the haze of pain clouding his mind, for him to realize that he was not alone. There was something familiar about the speaker's voice but Hux was too distracted to place it, his every bit of attention ensnared by the torment of his body.

He couldn't remember what had happened, how he'd gotten to this point. He tried to draw in a deeper breath and ended up letting out something of a whine as his chest pinched and prickled against the motion of his lungs.

" _Hux!_ ”

This time the voice was short and sharp, the impatience more than just familiar. Recognition jolted through him, concurrent with another wave of pain.

Kylo Ren.

The Supreme Leader.

Well. That made a certain amount of sense, then. Hux's most recent memories were loose and a little bit fractured, but he had a vague recollection of springing the Resistance prisoners from captivity and allowing them to escape on their ridiculous garbage freighter. Ren must have found out about it, somehow—perhaps Pryde had realized the truth and promptly relayed his suspicions to their _benevolent_ leader. And now Hux was being punished.

Served him right, he supposed, for being so careless. Running about with Resistance scum, shooting his own men—how else could he have possibly expected this to end? Sabotaging the Supreme Leader was all well and good but there wasn't much sense in it if he wasn't going to be around to savor the other's defeat. A pity the Resistance hadn't moved in faster—it had been a long shot, Hux had known, but it would have been _so_ worth it if they'd managed to topple Kylo from his stolen throne.

"I know you can hear me," Ren drawled, in the typical tone of voice that preceded sudden and terrible violence. Hux stiffened by reflex and immediately regretted it as his body lit up in sensation. He might have even whimpered. Hard to say. Regardless, his reaction had not gone unnoticed.

"Look at me," the Supreme Leader commanded.

Hux supposed he had no real incentive to obey the man anymore, but if he was about to die he'd rather see his death coming. Slowly, begrudgingly, he gathered up what little energy he had and cracked apart the lids of his eyes.

The first thing he noticed was the dreary dimness—he was not aboard the well-lit deck of the _Steadfast_ anymore. Or any other starship, for that matter.

At least, he didn't think so.

As his eyes took in the details around him, however, he realized that the low lighting—a soft, pale-yellow glow emanating from small sconces close to the ground—looked an awful lot like the emergency lighting aboard the _Finalizer_. And aboard any other Resurgent-class vessel, by extension. The walls around him were also familiar in composition, sheets of silver-colored durasteel stretching up around him into the gloom above. The durasteel was smeared with grime and grease, certainly, but he'd seen similar in the maintenance areas of his ship.

Other details of note: the ground wasn't level, and he had slid down into the crease between what he assumed was the actual floor and the wall. He was semi-reclined, his legs awkwardly elevated by some sort of raised platform and nearly level with his head. Trash surrounded him, enormous chunks of metallic debris and structural chaff, thick coils of corroded tubing and bundles of stripped wires interspersed with piles of biological waste Hux did not care to look at closely enough to identify. He was also partially submerged. Sludgy, gray-brown water came midway up his chest, which was a bit of a surprise. With his senses overwhelmed with pain, he hadn't even noticed he was wet.

More of a surprise was the presence of the Supreme Leader, crouching beside him in the swampy water. Hux flinched when he noticed him, not expecting the man to be so _close_. Kylo had ditched the helmet again, Hux saw—and in the dim lighting of the room, the idiot's scar wasn't visible, making him look softer. Younger.

The lighting also made Ren look slightly transparent and _blue_ , somehow, which his mind was having trouble reconciling. Hux _knew_ he was only seeing things, but he couldn't will away the illusion. He must have hit his head harder than he thought—or was it Kylo who had hit him? Hux was still unclear on the details. He wasn't dead, though, and Ren didn't look overly upset...so perhaps this wasn't about the spy after all?

"S-supreme Leader," Hux rasped out, with great difficulty. Talking was unpleasant; even his teeth hurt. Still, he wasn't about to risk offending the man, not when he was in this condition. It might very well be too late to save himself, but the fact of the matter was that Hux had no idea what was going on and if there was any chance at all at avoiding execution he would do whatever the situation required.

Kylo smiled, and it was the most disturbing thing Hux had ever seen. "So you _can_ see me," he murmured quietly, almost to himself. "Good."

"It isn't that dark in here," Hux grumbled, pain and irritation making him snippy.

Puzzlement furrowed Kylo's brow, and he looked down at his own hands for a beat before glancing back at Hux. He opened his mouth as if to say something, then closed it again and shook his head. "You must be feeling better than you look if you've got the energy for sarcasm," he muttered.

Sarcasm? What the hell did he mean by that?

Hux stared at Kylo in disbelief. "I feel like garbage," he retorted flatly, since the Supreme Leader was apparently looking for honesty. "I have no idea where I _am_ , let alone what's happening. If this is a new game of yours, spare me the torment and kill me now."

"You're on the _Steadfast_ ," Kylo said, and Hux was caught off-guard by how easily Ren provided the information. "What's left of it, anyway."

"Left of it—?" Hux looked around himself again, paying particular attention to the dirtied walls and piles of junk around him. What did Kylo mean by that? Had something happened to the ship? The emergency lights wouldn't have activated unless there was...well, an emergency, of course, but this...all this detritus...just where _was_ he?

"It crashed. On Exegol." When Hux sputtered in shock, Kylo held up a hand for silence. "There was a battle between the Resistance and Palpatine's Final Order fleet. The Final Order lost."

"What? _When?_ " Hux could only boggle helplessly at Kylo Ren. Nothing the man was saying made sense _—_ how could there have been a battle without him noticing? Why didn't he remember any of it? "Where was _I?_ "

Kylo pointed down, blue-tinted finger hovering just over the murky surface of the water. "You were here. Dead. Pryde identified you as the spy and executed you on the bridge."

Hux would have laughed at that—obviously he hadn't been executed, if he was sitting there quite alive and talking to Ren—but his attention snagged on Kylo's mention of the spy and a sudden flash of panic overtook all other thoughts. _Shit. He knew._ "Spy?" Hux tried to sit up, only to stop when his spine crackled and crunched as if it was filled with broken glass. "Me? I'm not—I don't know what you mean," he gasped out, too winded by pain to sound even remotely convincing.

Kylo waved aside his feeble protests. "You are, but that's beside the point—"

"Pryde's lying," Hux snapped, forcing himself up straighter despite the crick in his back. " _He_ must be the spy. He's trying to set me up, you see—he wants you to kill me!"

"Pryde's dead," Kylo said, with the air of someone deeply unconcerned by that fact. "Blown up on the bridge."

"Oh." Hux didn't know how to process that bit of news. He didn't like Pryde—never had—and the man's obsession in hunting down the spy certainly hadn't made Hux's life any easier. But Pryde being dead eliminated a rather convenient scapegoat and Hux fidgeted, all too aware of Ren's close proximity. "Well, serves him right. Being the spy, and all," he tried anyway.

"Hux." Ren sighed, a strange and echoing sound in the dismal chamber. "I know you're the spy. I knew it from the start. I could read your intentions through the Force. You do realize that, right?”

Hux stared at Kylo in slowly dawning horror, the blood draining from his face. He said nothing; there was nothing he _could_ say.

“It’s the same way I knew you wanted to kill Snoke,” Kylo continued, unaffected by Hux’s guilty reaction. “The same way I knew you wanted to kill _me_. Having the Resistance eliminate me was just a means to that end for you." He frowned, suddenly thoughtful. "I would have figured it out even without the Force, actually. I'm surprised you lasted as long as you did, given how invested Pryde was in exposing you."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Hux replied, his chest tight, his voice thin. Within the cage of his ribs his heart pounded, magnifying his aches and pains with every beat. It was almost certainly too late to salvage the situation, but he couldn’t help but try. "If I was the spy—if you _knew_ all along—you would have killed me."

"No. It never mattered," Kylo said, a careless dismissal that was somehow so much worse than a condemnation. "And if your information helped keep Rey alive, all the better."

"Rey," Hux spat, the name unfamiliar. He could infer her identity readily enough, however. "The scavenger girl. You'd risk the fate of the First Order, just for her sake?"

Kylo just looked at him, expression inscrutable. "Of course."

Frustration bubbled up but just as quickly boiled over, leaving nothing but a deep, pervasive sense of apathy in its wake. "You're a terrible Supreme Leader," Hux muttered, and though he was likely signing his death warrant with such a statement, he couldn't find it within himself to care. Especially given what little regard Kylo Ren actually seemed to have for anything pertaining to the First Order, least of all the rank Hux had coveted so badly, for so long.

"I'm not the Supreme Leader," Kylo said, another reveal so casually delivered despite the gravity of the statement. Hux gaped, utterly floored. "Not anymore."

It took Hux a few minutes to digest that nugget of information. His heart palpitations intensified over the implications. If Ren wasn't the Supreme Leader... " _What?_ Then who is?"

"Pryde." Kylo nodded towards the ceiling. "Well, until the bridge exploded. It might have been Palpatine, after that. For a moment."

"Palpatine," Hux echoed weakly, sagging in place. Not much of an improvement in any sense of the word. The First Order’s history with Supreme Leaders was questionable at best, and there seemed to be a fairly consistent downward trend over time. Snoke had been bad, as evil and twisted as he was, but he'd had a vision. And that vision had brought the First Order tantalizingly close to galactic domination. Kylo Ren had been a disaster, too young and reckless to do much more than drag the Order down with him on his self-destructive spiral.

Now there was _Palpatine_ , the final piece within this ridiculous dark side triptych.

Hux supposed he didn't know much about the Emperor as he was now, but he knew his history. Three decades of isolation in the Unknown Regions after falling through the core of an exploding Death Star probably hadn't improved the man's temperament a bit. Hux wasn't thrilled at the prospect of handing the First Order over to yet another power-mad Sith lord.

Why did this keep happening? What was it about the First Order that left it so vulnerable to hostile takeovers by the Sith?

"He's dead now, too," Kylo said, unintentionally easing Hux's concerns over that particular matter. "Rey killed him."

"Of course she did." Hux let his head fall back, his eyes staring blankly towards the ceiling. Kylo hadn't mentioned her fate, but given what he now knew about Kylo's dedication to the cause—or lack thereof—Hux doubted that the brute had killed the girl. "I suppose _she's_ the Supreme Leader now?" he drawled, only half in jest.

"No. There is no Supreme Leader."

"How can that be?" Hux barked out, stiffening at Kylo's casual dismissal of the all-important title. "Who's in charge of the First Order?"

Kylo sighed, one hand running through his cyan-limned hair in evident exasperation. "Aren't you listening? There is _no_ First Order, Hux. Palpatine lost. Pryde gave the First Order to the Emperor and both the First and Final Orders fell. There is no fleet. No army. No Order."

"What?" Hux stared at Ren, his heart plunging like a stone through his chest. A slick sense of weightless vertigo swept through him so quickly that he nearly passed out. " _No_. Impossible."

The corner of Kylo's mouth twitched up into a smirk, which he quickly covered with one hand. Hux had still seen it, though, and he couldn't help but glare. Was this _funny_ to Ren? Did he find it amusing that everything they'd been working towards had gone up in flames? Noting the expression on Hux's face—an odd mix of unmitigated horror and disapproval—Ren's humor faded slightly, and he cocked his head to the side in apparent curiosity.

"Isn't this what you wanted? Isn't this why you betrayed the Order?"

"I was betraying _you_ , not the First Order," Hux snarled, bristling with sudden fury. "I wanted _you_ to fail, _you_ to fall. Not the Order. _Never_ the Order."

"Well," Kylo huffed out, leaning back to sit upon the same platform Hux's legs were stretched across. The water was so thick it didn't even seem to ripple with his motions, which was...unnerving, to say the least. Hux eyed the mysterious fluid with deep distrust. "You got half your wish, though I'm not sure how much your little indiscretions actually contributed to that end."

"No— _this_ isn't what I wanted. I didn't think a Resistance victory—" Hux grimaced, the words sour on his tongue—"would entail suffering your presence like this." He shifted irritably in place, the painful echoes of his innumerable injuries still radiating through his body. The initial shock had worn off a bit, however, and he was quickly acclimating to this new level of discomfort. Years of practice and experience had made him quite the adept. "I would rather be dead."

Kylo examined him through narrowed eyes before smirking again. "I doubt that. You came back readily enough."

Hux scowled at the nonsense statement. "I don't know what you're trying to insinuate."

"I already told you," Kylo replied, with uncharacteristic levels of patience. "Pryde executed you. You _died_. You just didn't want to stay that way."

With a scoff, Hux dismissed Ren's words _—_ although he wasn't as confident in his derision as he had been only a few minutes earlier. Nothing Kylo had said so far should have made sense...and yet, as Hux lay there in filth in the crooked bowels of a silent ship, he had to admit that deep down the words resonated with a certain sense of truth. He didn't _want_ Kylo to be right, but he couldn't shake the inexplicable feeling that the other man somehow was. And that meant...

"So, what? I'm dead? What's all this, then?" He lifted a soggy hand from the water, splashing foul droplets everywhere as he indicated the dark space around them. "Don't tell me you're dead too and this is the afterlife. I won't stand for it—I _won't_."

Kylo leaned back and chuckled. Hux watched him and said nothing, not quite sure what was so damn amusing. Was this all another joke at his expense? Hux remembered the debacle during the attack on D'Qar, when he'd been made an utter fool of by the damn Resistance. Despite the lack of an audience this time around, Hux burned with shame just as sharply now as he had back then.

"If this _was_ the afterlife, you'd have very little say in the matter," Kylo pointed out, feeding Hux's suspicions. The redhead turned away, lip curling in frustration—until Kylo spoke again, his words startling Hux back to attention. "Fortunately for you, you're not dead anymore."

"Anymore," Hux repeated flatly, his face abruptly crinkling into a scowl. " _Anymore_. You're either dead or you aren't, _Ren_." It was immensely liberating to use the man's name again, even if his insides did tense instinctively at the breach in protocol. "It's not some transitional or temporary state. It's the end. The terminus. If I'd died earlier, I'd still be very dead _now_."

Kylo only lifted his brows, a smug, knowing grin tugging at his lips. "There's so much you don't understand," he murmured, and for a second Hux eyed him warily, half-expecting the darksider to start spouting occult Sith or Jedi nonsense. Instead, however, Ren just crossed his arms over his chest and looked to Hux expectantly, obviously waiting for the other to take the bait and ask for more details. He was still blue, and through his face and chest Hux could have absolutely _sworn_ he could see the paneling of the wall behind him. The redhead longed to rub his eyes and dispel the illusion but wasn't about to stick his scum-slicked hands anywhere near his face.

"I don't have time for this," he settled on growling, shifting about as impatiently as his battered body would allow. It wasn't much, but he thought it possible that his range of motion might just be improving. Marginally.

"You actually have a lot more time than you should," Kylo countered, his response infuriatingly—and probably purposefully—ambiguous, his tone conversational. "Well, not that much, maybe," he corrected himself. "There's a fire in the forward decks and the suppression system's nonfunctional. That and this whole structure—" he waved a hand at the space overhead—"isn't doing that well after the crash. It might be time to start considering an exit route."

Exit route? From _where?_ There were no doors within sight, and he had no idea where he was. He could hardly sit up straight, let alone walk, so how he was supposed to reach any sort of exit was an absolute mystery to Hux.

Hux sighed, irritation ebbing in the face of exhaustion as a creeping, sucking lethargy stole over him. He let himself relax fractionally, his body sliding a little further into the water and aching freshly all over again. He wasn't in the mood for this—hadn't been, right from the start—and every word Ren spoke only made it worse. If this was all a joke to the idiot, Hux would really rather the man just get to the punchline already and spare him further agony.

"Why are you here?" he finally bit out, realizing that Kylo wasn't going to just kill him or get up and walk away. He was there for a purpose—probably an annoying one—and until he had a chance to explain himself he was obviously going to be _insufferable_.

Kylo's answer came as something of a surprise.

"I need your help."


End file.
